The Gartner Group now estimates that half of the government agencies in the United States and Canada will not meet the y2k deadline. "No problem!" say state CIOs in charge of the repair.

I don't believe either. Gartner is being too optimistic.

This report appeared in COMPUTERWORLD (Oct. 13).

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At a recent gathering of state CIOs, Gartner Group, Inc. analyst Ian Temple said about half of all government agencies in North America won't solve the year 2000 problem in time, so ``you have to plan for failure.'' He spoke at the National Association for Information Resources Executives conference here.

But talk to almost any state CIO, such as Tennessee's Bradley Dugger, and you will hear mostly confidence about the repair effort.

``We feel like we're in good shape. We're planning to party a year 2000 party,' Dugger said. The state has completed fixes on 65% of its code, he said.